


On the road again

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [40]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23892463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: The team travels slowly to the pickup point.
Series: Mikkel's Story [40]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	On the road again

Overwhelmed by guilt, Mikkel stared blankly at the woods, his thoughts whirling while his hands continued mechanically to chop vegetables.

_I, in my arrogance, went to Kastellet and stirred up these murderous ghosts. All my fault …_

Mikkel was, as Emil had said, a reasonable man. After several minutes he managed to pull himself together and think more clearly.

_But … if I had not gone that day, someone **would** have gone the next day. Sigrun, of course, and either Emil or me. We weren't persuaded to bypass Odense; we couldn't possibly have been persuaded to bypass Kastellet, and there was no reason that we knew of to bypass it anyway. Even if we'd thought of ghosts as a possibility – and why would we? – we'd have thought them as harmless as the previous batch._

_If Sigrun had gone, if we'd officially explored Kastellet, Reynir most certainly would **not** have been allowed to go. Without Reynir begging me to leave, would I have stopped when I found the package? Or might I – or one of the others – have gone farther in? Gone in out of the sunlight? Gone where the ghosts could reach us?_

Guilt wrestled with reason, and reason slowly achieved a fragile victory.

_We could not have anticipated this. **I** could not have anticipated this. Kastellet was a trap, a trap that we would inevitably have fallen into, being who and where we were. I fell into it, yes, and all of this has followed, but if I had not fallen in, the result would have been the same or maybe worse. The ghosts would still have been stirred up, and maybe they could have attacked someone **then** , without Reynir to call upon Onni for help._

_Beating myself up over something that would have happened anyway, will only make it harder to do my duty. And I **will** do my duty._

With new resolve, he looked down to find the soup simmering, almost ready, and his hands, his traitor hands with their dozens of scars old and new from mishaps with knives and even forks, uninjured from his inattention. He was distracted from this surprising sight as Sigrun and Tuuri emerged from the tank, and his heart ached to see Tuuri, formerly an irrepressible fount of cheer, sad and quiet. Unable to look at her, he began setting out bowls and spoons. His first duty was breakfast.

* * *

Their progress to the pickup point was very slow, the tank never moving much faster than walking and often slower. They had dismantled one of the crates and used the pieces to cover the damage to the undercarriage, but that was now a weak point that had to be considered at all times. Tuuri drove slowly, watching for anything that might catch and tear, and the immunes had sometimes to remove obstacles or carefully guide her around those that could not be removed. On occasion they simply had to backtrack, unable to work their way through.

Mikkel cleaned. He cleaned _everything_ , the team's clothing, the bedclothes, the interior of the tank; chores gave his hands something to do and allowed him to forget himself for a while. He organized baths on those days when their camp had plenty of water and fuel, and the team gladly took advantage of the opportunities, except of course for Lalli, who nevertheless silently acquiesced without being bribed. Mikkel was unsure whether the little scout had decided to follow the customs of the team or was simply too discouraged to object.

Lalli's snares seldom caught anything, all the tuna fish was consumed, and Mikkel was becoming worried about malnutrition. Both Sigrun and Lalli made bows for themselves and went hunting when the tank was going particularly slowly, but game was scarce and it was cause for celebration when either of them came back with a squirrel.

Sigrun's arm was not getting much worse but not getting much better either, and Mikkel was worried about the possibility that the infection might not be vulnerable to the antibiotics that they had available. Malnutrition and overwork wouldn't help there either.

Lalli was exhausting himself, scouting ahead, hunting, and checking their back trail. Both from him ( _via_ Tuuri) and from Reynir, Mikkel learned that the ghosts were still following. Occasional grossling attacks seemed to be normal encounters; the ghosts appeared to have run out of grosslings. The runes on the tank were renewed every evening by Reynir.

Besides gathering fuel at each campsite, Emil appointed himself Reynir's keeper and, taking the kitten with him, let Reynir out several times a day, the two of them walking behind the tank for hours when they could. Mikkel joined them when he could find no chores to deal with, offering his services as translator, but to no avail as they seemed to have little or nothing to say.

After the first couple of days, Tuuri managed a forced, somewhat fragile, cheer that resembled, if one didn't look too closely, her old attitude. The rest of the team did their best to avoid any topic which might distress her, which under the circumstances meant that no one talked much at all.

And so the days passed.

* * *

They were five days out from the attack when the tank broke down again.

“Tuuri, please ask Lalli to go into that town and look for fishing gear.”

“I'm going to fix this!”

“I know that,” Mikkel answered, trying to soothe without sounding like it, “but we're completely out of tuna and the hunting hasn't been good. That river over there had a reputation as a good river for fishing. I'd really like Lalli and Emil to catch us some fish while you're working.”

“I … I suppose it will take that long to fix. I'll tell him.” Lalli departed without complaint, but when he returned empty-handed several hours later, Mikkel had not the heart to send him forth again.

Having crawled under the tank and spent all day checking and repairing connections, Tuuri reported unhappily, “It still won't start. There must be more damage farther forward, but I'll fix that tomorrow, really.”

“That's all right,” Mikkel told her gently. “I don't believe anyone else could have kept it running this long, and I do believe that you will get it running again.”

“Keep at it, kid,” Sigun put in somewhat encouragingly, while Emil simply shrugged and addressed himself to his supper. Though they set watches for the night, they were undisturbed.

The next morning, Lalli presented Mikkel with a scrap of paper on which he had drawn a crude sort of building with a blank rectangle above it. Swiftly grasping the intent, the Dane had to stop and consider before responding. After a moment, in the rectangle he carefully printed the Danish word for “sport”, and in a second rectangle, the word for “fish”. Lalli examined the result, nodded, and departed at a run. Mikkel turned to scrubbing the pots and dishes.

Lalli returning an hour later with some ancient but usable fishing gear, the young men were sent off to the river and came back that afternoon with a bucket full of fish and Emil hooked in the back. Disinfecting the wound, Mikkel was only relieved that neither had been hooked in the face, and at least they had several days' worth of fish.

“There you are,” he told Emil, slapping a small bandage on the injury.

“Why do we have to do this?” the other asked plaintively, twisting uncomfortably. “Are we about to run out of food?”

“No, no, there is no need to worry about that,” Mikkel answered almost truthfully. “I only need these to supplement the portion of _conventional_ ingredients in our meals.”

“What … does that even mean? What exactly are you putting in that?” Emil glared suspiciously at the pot simmering innocently over the campfire.

“I guarantee that nothing I feed you is inedible.” _And supper will be much better,_ he thought, _with fried fish instead of – well, in addition to – this awful soup._

Emil accepted his lunch with a grimace; Lalli simply ignored his share, turning toward the tank. This was not to be tolerated. Mikkel took the last remaining cookies from his stash and, seizing the little scout by the scruff of the neck, forced them into his mouth.

“I'm well aware,” he lectured in Danish, which might as well have been Martian for all the Finn understood, “that you've been entering some level of depression as of late, but if you think I'll allow you to express that by not eating under my watch, you're gravely mistaken.” Too shocked to resist, the scout swallowed the cookies, accepted the bowl that was pressed into his hands, and began numbly to spoon soup into his mouth. Any urge he might have felt to throw it in Mikkel's face was deterred by the big Dane's stern expression.

The tank was still not fixed, and Tuuri was still tracing wires, trying to find the fault. She accepted her share of lunch and consumed it rapidly without looking away from the engine, then immediately turned back to her task.

Taking Reynir's share into the back compartment, Mikkel found the Icelander lying on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling. “Lunch is ready,” he announced, “There you go.” The other accepted the bowl, thanking him politely as always but in a very subdued tone.

“I will take you for a walk in three hours.” Emil had not been available to escort Reynir and so he had been cooped up in his cramped quarters since early morning.

“Sure,” Reynir answered glumly, staring at his soup without making any effort to eat it.

Mikkel waited, but when the other said nothing more, he prompted, “Am I to conclude that you too are now depressed?”

“What? _No!_ I'm not depressed! I've just had so much time to think. And I've realized that everything would have been different if I had just stayed home, and now all I feel is crushing regret and helplessness.

"That's all.”

Unfortunately Mikkel couldn't truthfully argue with that. The younger man _would_ have been better off if he'd stayed home. “I'm not a psychologist, so you will have to endure that until we have you back among your own,” he answered somewhat callously.

“Okay.” As Mikkel departed, the other muttered, “If I _can_ go back …” There being no reasonable response to that, Mikkel merely said “Take care now” and closed the door.

Having finished choking down her lunch, Sigrun wanted to talk. “Okay, listen,” she told him, “It's been _several days_ , and that thing is still busted. At some point we've got to admit that it's not getting fixed. I say we start preparing for maybe having to walk.”

“I don't believe it is time for that yet,” Mikkel answered mildly.

“I'm _not_ missing that boat!” she snapped. “We need to get on plan B!”

“No!” Tuuri cried, raising her head from the innards of the motor and all but banging her head against the raised hood. “I'm almost finished, I swear! I just have to get it to … start.”

“Don't feel pressured,” Mikkel assured her, “we still have plenty of time.” To Sigrun's glare he added, “You don't need to worry. I have already thoroughly considered the possibility of an eventual trek. I'm never opposed to having a plan B.”

As she turned away in disgust, he began cleaning the pots and dishes, already planning how best to fry the fish with the gear he had available.

He had only started preparing dinner when it began to rain.


End file.
